The time Tommy Lee Jones broke Benicio del Toro’s arm
Between the pair of them, Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio del Toro have provided some of the most intense and enigmatic moments of modern cinema. While possessing stunning respective filmographies, the pair eventually came together in 2003 to make William Friedkin’s action thriller The Hunted, along with Connie Nielsen.
By that point, both actors had already established themselves as huge stars. Jones had won the Academy Award ten years prior for his effort in the Andrew Davis action thriller The Fugitive, as well as giving further commendable efforts in the likes of JFK, Natural Born Killers, Men in Black and Double Jeopardy.
Del Toro, on the other hand, made his breakthrough with a performance as Fred Fenster in Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects, following up with another praised turn as Benny Dalmau in Basquiat. Before long, he’d also turned up and excelled in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Snatch.
The Hunted saw Jones play a retired civilian contractor and Special Operations Forces Trainer who teams up with a young FBI agent to track down a former student of his who has gone rogue and is working as a highly skilled and deadly assassin. The film was not the best work of either Friedkin, del Toro or Jones, and it also sadly brought in a rather weak box office.
If that wasn’t bad enough, then the moment when Jones broke del Toro’s arm during production surely was. Speaking with the BBC, del Toro explained, “You know, it’s the ones that look easy which are the ones that are going to get you hurt! I was diving to the ground in the forest, reaching for a knife, and Tommy dived in too, and he landed on top of me.”
The actor added, “We’d practised it in the gym with mats on the floor many times, but when we got out into the middle of the forest, the land was different. I just fell awkwardly, and Tommy fell on top of me.” A lesser actor might have crumbled and delayed the production, but del Toro stormed ahead with his broken wrist.
A Paramount spokeswoman at the time had said, “Even if he is in a cast for a few months, there are ways to work around it. He can work with a brace or a glove.” Such comments suggest, though, that del Toro really had no choice but to press on with the production of The Hunted even if he was in excruciating pain.
Sure enough, Jones wouldn’t have meant to break his co-star’s arm, but perhaps there was a touch of relevance considering the kind of relationship their characters share on screen. Del Toro had been drawn to his character because of his killer instincts and moral nuances, admitting that the story had “a message to it.”
“If you train someone to kill, how can you stop them from doing that?” the actor asked. “A lot of people say that it’s very difficult to leave it behind. You know, people who’ve fought in wars, they keep those demons in the closet and then, one day, something happens.”
And something certainly did “happen”, only sadly for del Toro; it was having his co-star fall flat on his wrist and breaking it. Thankfully, the production went ahead, but considering the critical and commercial reception, perhaps it might have done better not to have.
